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Salomon XT Advanced Skin 5

It has been awhile since my last entry. I have been diligently running around my schedule of work and school. It has done well so far, and I’m ever so thankful that I have not been injured for this month of January, and that my running has been more consistent. I’d attribute it to some of the thing I’ve learnt it school, and I have quickly applied it to my training.

A quick side-note; I have yet to hear of any announcement about the Sundown Ultra-marathon. My personal hunch is, that with the move of the Sundown Marathon event to ‘the city’, the organizers may not have enough personnel (planning and/or logistics) to support an Ultra-marathon although it’s just a month away. Who knows there might be an announcement sometime soon?

Anyway, after having purchased my defacto trail running shoes, The Northface Singletrack, I was beginning to wonder when I would ever push myself out the door and head down to the trails. After much procrastination during the seemingly long Chinese New Year holiday (which was from Sunday to Tuesday), I finally made the trip on a Tuesday morning.

With little knowledge I had on trails, I headed out, put on my running shoes, and ran the trails.

It was a hard effort. It had been 2 years since I did a trail run at Macritchie Reservoir. My only mistake was running a little too fast, and not carrying water/electrolytes with me. That said, I had abdominal pains which lasted awhile. Despite that, I was hooked. Running on the trails was way more fun than on the road.

About a week before CNY, I noticed that the US Dollar dropped to a reasonable point where I could buy an essential trail running gear which I had wanted to own for a while now, so, after the delayed shipment due to CNY, I received it; the Salomon XT Advanced Skin 5 S-Lab Pack.

Salomon XT Advanced Skin 5

Salomon XT Advanced Skin 5

Salomon XT Advanced Skin 5

iRunFar.com has a good review on it, so check it out. My take on it after trying it out on another trail session today was that it really was a very good pack. It stays to your body, doesn’t bounce around and has a several compartments to carry other items (phones, muesli bars, etc). While you can get this pack at the Salomon Store in Singapore (warning: I think it’s really overpriced), I chose to get mine from the Racingtheplanet Store. They have great service and fast delivery with a reasonable shipping price. I did however, order something else;

Salomon Soft Flask

Salomon Soft Flask

Salomon Soft Flask

Salomon Soft Flask

Fan’s of Kilian Jornet would have seen him use this particular item during his win at the Western States 100 Endurance Run last year, where he carried 2 such bottles (Kilian’s look larger in terms of capacity) in custom-made gloves for ease of carry. Basically, it’s made of material similar to the bladder powering the S-Lab pack, but comes in neat capacity of 237ml. With a bite valve, the flask ensures that water doesn’t leak out, and compresses and lightens when it runs out of water.

I regretted not buying one more, which would make my training runs around my neighborhood much easier without carry bottled water. My ideal setup would be one for water and one for electrolytes.

I returned from my second trail session of the year today, and that makes it my firs time running Macritchie twice within a week thanks to the holidays. It felt much better today, although I got a little lost there trying to find a longer route to run. Click here and here for my training logs.